


Now and Forevermore

by Bus_Kids_Burgade (Inthemorninglight)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Family Feels, Gen, Jemma is too smart for her own good, Kid Fic, Platonic Relationships, They're teenagers now, adoption au, mama may, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-21 21:49:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7406209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inthemorninglight/pseuds/Bus_Kids_Burgade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adoption AU</p><p>Jemma is leaving for college. Fitz isn't. Parenting teenage child-prodigies is so much harder than anyone told May it would be.<br/>...<br/>They've come a long way in seven years, but when everything in Jemma's world changes, old fears and insecurities come right back to life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Who's To Fight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7020631) by [buckysbears (DrZebra)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrZebra/pseuds/buckysbears). 



> This is set in the amazing buckysbears's adoption AU verse which is so incredible I couldn't stop thinking about it and then this happened. She very kindly gave me permission to post my accidental burst of inspiration. 
> 
> Quick catch-up if you haven't read buckysbears' work: May is a retired cop who fosters and adopts Trip and the bus kids. For the majority of this fic, Trip is 16, FitzSimmons are 15, and Skye is 13.

By the time they’re fourteen, Jemma and Fitz have blown right past high school and community college. With some supplemental online courses and a short summer stay at the state university two hours away, Fitz has earned an undergraduate degree in physics and mathematics and Jemma has put away a diploma for biology and chemistry. May’s seen this trajectory for years, but she is still sort of astounded by the whole thing. She’s incredibly proud (and only a tad bit smug when she sees ‘My Child is an Honors Student’ bumper stickers), but she is also acutely aware that they have tapped out all their academic options within a hundred mile radius, and she’s not entirely sure what’s going to happen next.

Unsurprisingly, their names have come up on the radar, and not long after they receive their first bachelor’s degrees, they’re invited to a dinner in one of the new science buildings up at the state U. May, chaperoning them, sees the round-eyed looks they get on the tours of the lab facilities. The same sort of expression Skye gets when she’s set loose in an Apple store. Grey-haired people in smart suits say how impressed they are with their honors theses, talk with them on a level May has never been able to, and it’s bittersweet to watch.

She always knew they would be heading off to a university long before eighteen, but _fourteen_ is just so young. On the one hand they’re qualified to participate in ground-breaking research that could change the face of science. On the other, she still has to remind them to pick their shoes up so the dog doesn’t eat them and not to be on their phones when someone’s talking to them and ‘stop yelling at your sister, count backwards from ten, and find a better solution’. There are still a lot of days when they’re uncertainties rise up like walls around them and May has to climb down and help them find a handhold.

And there’s a look in some of these academics’ eyes that May doesn’t like. As if her children are amusing party tricks or dollar signs or just miniature thirty-year-olds.

Jemma is in her element, bubbling eagerly about this or that article, reveling in not having been told to be quiet once all evening. She’s not always particularly smooth, but if she notices, it doesn’t bother her. Fitz, on the other hand, is fumbling more and more over his words as the night wears on, keeping his eyes on the floor and shrinking behind May, clearly overwhelmed by the people and the noise.

“We don’t have to go there in the fall, do we?” Fitz asks as he throws himself into the front seat of the car once the whole ordeal is winding down.

“You don’t _have_ to go anywhere you don’t want to,” May assures him. She presses her lips together, then says, “Besides, I think it’s a little early for you to be packing your bags.”

“Good,” Fitz says with obvious relief.

Jemma, sitting in the backseat, doesn’t say anything.

After they get home, when May is doing her nightly stretches to ease the ache in her hip (made worse by a night in heels), there’s a hesitant knock on her bedroom door.

“Come in,” she calls softly, but it’s another minute before the door actually cracks open.

“I’m not keeping you up, am I?” Jemma asks, peeking through the small gap.

May slides up from the floor to the end of the bed and pats the duvet next to her encouragingly. Jemma pads across the rug and hops up next to her, folding her legs beneath her neatly. May waits for her to say something, patiently counting her own breaths.

“That was a hard ‘no’ then, in the car?” Jemma asks finally, focusing on the fingers she’s twisting together in her lap. “About going to the university next year?”

May turns to look her over more directly. “Do you feel ready to leave home?” she asks, as unloaded as she can.

Jemma worries her bottom lip, thinking. “I don’t know. Fitz isn’t.”

“We’re talking about you, though.”

“I guess… I’m not either?” it comes out a question.

“I think if you’re not sure, then probably not,” May nods.

“What would it be like?” Jemma asks. “Would – would they put me in a dorm or would I stay with a family…?”

“I don’t really know,” May admits. “It’s something we’ll have to look into, but not for next year.”

Jemma nods, looking only mildly putout. “What am I going to do, then?” she asks.

May’s not sure about that either. Fitz applies for an undergraduate engineering program. Most of the work can be done from a distance, but May has to drive him to the city once a month for lab hours with some special equipment. Jemma tears through a pre-med program in one semester and an interim course. By January, she is bored and spinning her wheels and May can tell. She suggests some non-academic challenges that might build interpersonal skills. Volunteering, tutoring, getting a job at the library. Jemma half-heartedly looks into these things.

When May comes home to find the curtains in the girls’ room mostly charred and Jemma waiting with a guilty explanation about an experimental sedative-laced pepper spray, she knows Jemma has outgrown this town. Reluctantly she allows her to apply to several doctoral programs for the following schoolyear. Fifteen, May reasons, is better than fourteen. But not by much.

Not only does Jemma get in, but, surprising no one, she’s a hot commodity. At least a dozen programs are clamoring to have her on their roster, and the packages just keep getting sweeter. This does not necessarily make the decision easier, though.

“Stanford has a bio-printer!” May hears Jemma shouting.

“Stanford’s on the other side of the country!” Fitz yells back.

Arguments are breaking out a lot more often between them these days. Ever since brochures and pamphlets and endless pages of statistics on far-flung institutions have started cluttering Jemma’s desk.

May puts her foot down on anywhere outside reasonable driving distance. (“If there’s an emergency, I need to be able to get there immediately.” “But printable organs, Mum!”) What exactly ‘reasonable driving distance’ is, though, is disputed. May wants three hours. Jemma objects, not without legitimacy, that this excludes every acclaimed biochemistry program in the country. It is a long, arduous, at-times-painful negotiation, but at last they reach an agreement. The sixth best biochemistry program in the nation is a four-and-a-half hour drive from home. The university is thrilled to enroll her.

The hug Jemma springs on May the day the confirmation letter arrives – wild and messy and tight enough to make her worry about her ribs – is a moment May folds into her sense-memories like a rare pearl. She doesn’t know if she’s ever seen this kind of happiness on the girl’s face.

That night, after the celebratory ice cream run, May knocks on Fitz’s door holding a banana split. He claimed a stomach ache and skipped both dinner and ice cream, but May’s sure he won’t refuse the bait. Ice cream and talking is a tradition of theirs after all.

She sits down on the end of the bed, slouching to avoid the top bunk, and stretches her legs alongside his but going in the opposite direction. Even sitting on opposite ends of the bed, it’s obvious his are much longer.

“How’s your stomach?” she asks, watching him scarf down the banana split.

“What? Oh –” He shrugs, but his spoon slows down considerably.

He pauses, sucking on the end of the plastic utensil, and anxiety creeps its way back into his expression.

“What are you thinking about?” she presses gently.

He must know it’s coming, but he usually needs the prompt. Jemma May needs to wait out, but both the boys need to be nudged into talking.

“Do you think I should be going to Uni, too?” he asks at last, blurting the words in fits and stops and peering cautiously at her through his lashes.

“Do you feel ready?” she asks, mirroring her conversation with Jemma from a year ago.

“Jemma is,” he mumbles into his ice cream.

“We’re talking about you.”

He shrugs and shuffles uncomfortably.

“How about do you _want_ to go?” May rephrases.

He still hesitates, but the answer is clear in his eyes.

“Well, no!” he exclaims finally, adding on for good measure, “and I think she’s barmy.” He shoves the last of his ice cream into his mouth in one giant gulp and drops the empty paper cup on his desk. “We just got here,” he mumbles at his sticky fingers. “We spend half our lives looking for a good place to live, and we finally found one. What sense does it make to leave before we have to? And… and… I’d miss Lancelot too much.”

“There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to rush into adulthood,” May promises. “You’ve already had to deal with things most adults haven’t had to, and you deserve to get some of that time back. And I certainly don’t want to move you out a day before I have to,” she adds just to make sure he knows.

“It doesn’t… mean I’m… you know, slow,” he says. “We’re only fifteen. Most fifteen-year-olds aren’t prancing out of their parents’ houses.”

“Not wanting to go definitely doesn’t mean you’re less mature,” May nods. “You can’t compare yourself to Jemma. It’s different for everyone. Just because she wants to go to a university and you don’t doesn’t mean one of you is right and one is wrong. It just means you want different things right now.”

“Never have before,” Fitz mutters.

“You’re growing up,” May reminds him. “You’re two different people and what you want is starting to get more complicated, but that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you care about each other any less.”

Fitz says nothing, staring morosely at the pictures taped to the underside of the upper bunk. May swings her feet to the floor and shifts up the mattress a little. Time to get used to the change is about the only thing that will really help him, so she’ll give him that.

“I’m glad you’re not going anywhere just yet,” she tells him, though.

Classes start in mid-August, and the entire family (including Lancelot) is driving her to campus. She’ll have her own room in the dorms, but is supposed to check in with her hall director at least once a week, and May is requiring a phone call every two days and a text good night every evening.

“It’s weird to see you packing,” Fitz says, sprawled on Skye’s bed watching her tape another box of knick-knacks shut. They haven’t exactly had an overabundance of conversation in the run-up to her departure, but he’s almost always in her room these days.

“It feels weird to be doing it,” she admits.

It’s not like it was when they were in the system. They didn’t really have things to pack back then. And she keeps reminding herself that she’ll be back in this room all the time for holidays and summers and weekend visits. But the act of picking up her life in its entirety and transplanting it somewhere else is a little too achingly familiar. A silence hangs between them heavy with unsaid things.

“They’d take you in the engineering program in a heartbeat, you know,” she says evenly as she folds sweaters into a massive suitcase.

“Yeah, I know. Maybe – maybe next semester,” he mumbles, focusing on Skye’s stuffed penguin whose head he’s squashing.

Suddenly restless, he rolls off the bed and starts poking around in some of her half-packed boxes.

“You’re taking the original series?” he asks sharply, fishing the _Star Trek_ DVD book from underneath a stack of medical documentaries she’d collected from the library’s penny auctions.

“Well, that’s why I _packed_ it,” Jemma says, raising her eyebrows at him.

“But it was a birthday gift for both of us.”

She rolls her eyes. “That was before they were on Netflix. You’ll be able to watch them whenever you want.”

“That’s not the point!” he doesn’t really know why he’s suddenly shouting. “They’re half mine, and you – you didn’t – even _ask_.”

“I didn’t think you’d _mind_ ,” she says, crossing her arms impatiently. “Having them with me will help my room feel like home. And you haven’t touched them in years.”

“You still could have – asked.”

“Fine, would you mind terribly if I took the _Star Trek_ DVDs?”

“Yes!” And clutching them to his chest he storms from the room.

“Fitz!” she shouts, starting up from her place on the floor. “They’re half mine too, you know!”

His door slams resolutely down the hall.

He’s not the only one acting weird. May usually keeps her touching to a minimum, but in the days before they leave, she can’t seem to stop running her hands through Jemma’s hair or squeezing her shoulder as she passes. Skye’s been refusing to look at her and then staring at her sideways when she thinks Jemma’s not looking. Even Lance has noticed the packing and started making a bed out of any suitcase she leaves unattended for five minutes.

The night before they leave, Jemma stares up at the ceiling, her heart beating erratically in her chest. It has been a very long time since she’s thought about having a different ceiling to fall asleep beneath. The house is very quiet and she feels like she’s drowning in it, but then Skye’s voice floats out of the darkness to her right.

“You awake?”

She takes a moment to answer. “Yes.”

There’s a rustle of blankets as Skye kicks her way free and then she’s standing next to Jemma’s bed, shifting awkwardly from bare foot to bare foot. “Um, can I – ?”

Jemma shifts over and pulls the covers back for her. Skye dives in at once, pillowing her head on Jemma’s shoulder. It’s been a long time since they’ve shared a bed. Not since they were much littler and nightmares were a common occurrence.

“God, your feet are freezing,” Jemma complains and Skye shoves them under her warm calves in retaliation and they both dissolve in childish giggles.

They leave early the next morning. Being stuck in a van together for four-and-a-half hours helps the separation anxiety a lot. By the time they arrive on campus, her nerves have burned away to barely-contained excitement.

“This place is amazing!” Jemma gushes, dashing back to where her family waits by the van clutching her new room key and check-in papers. “I just saw someone with a Tardis-print skirt on. Just, like, walking around like a normal person.”

“Yeah, this place is something else,” Antoine says, though in a much different tone. He’s suspiciously eyeing a group of burly guys passing behind them screaming a Taylor Swift song at the top of their lungs.

Fitz just stares at the ground with his hands in his pockets. He hasn’t said a word to her since he stormed out of her room with the _Star Trek_ DVDs. Admittedly, she hasn’t gone out of her way to talk to him either, but if he doesn’t want to say goodbye to her, she’s not going to force him. Moving out is already difficult enough.

It only takes two trips with all of them helping to get all her things up to her room. Skye and Antoine bicker about where everything should go, taking turns rearranging the furniture and climbing up on top of things to hang posters until May steps in. She insists on meeting the RA and the hall director Jemma’s supposed to be checking in with, and then there’s nothing left for them to do. No one’s really ready to say goodbye yet, though, so May suggests they go to lunch.

It’s weird. It’s like every other lunch they’ve ever had, except it’s the last time they’ll all be together for months. Skye blows bubbles in her soda, and Antoine tells jokes he shouldn’t tell while they’re eating and Fitz complains about everything coming with pickles. There’s a twist to May’s expression that makes Jemma think she might not be the only one smiling and feeling like crying at the same time.

After lunch they swing through a grocery store to stock up on snacks and ramen noodles for her room. Antoine throws three enormous bags of cheese popcorn in the cart for her, and Skye grabs every kind of sugary cereal she can find. Jemma sees Fitz drop a box of her favorite biscuits in from the international aisle, and a little bit of the cold knot of tension tangled between them eases.

Then they head back to her dorm for one last sweep to make sure she has everything she’ll need.

“Okay, don’t forget to call me tonight,” May says, giving her a stern look.

“And me!” Skye chirps. “I want to hear all about the frat parties.”

“Jemma’s not going to frat parties,” Fitz splutters indignantly.

“Did you get the picture I sent you?” Antoine asks as he wraps her up in a tight hug.

She laughs. “The one with you showing off your ‘muscles’?”

“Anyone gives you a hard time, show them that and let ‘em know your big brother ain’t afraid to come kick some ass.”

Skye snickers. “Jemma can kick their asses way better than you can. You can’t even give Lance a time-out when he pees in your shoe.”

“Lance isn’t a douche,” Antoine points out as Skye elbows him out of the way and throws her arms around Jemma’s neck.

“Promise me college gossip?” she asks.

Jemma snorts, hugging her back. “Me? Gossip?”

“I know, you’re useless,” Skye sighs. “We love you anyway, though.” She stands back and pats Jemma’s cheek.

Then Jemma turns to Fitz. They stare at each other for a few seconds. Then Fitz sticks his hand out rather awkwardly. She shakes it.

“Skype tonight?” she asks tentatively.

“Yeah, maybe,” he shrugs.

“Don’t use any of my stuff as spare parts in your gadgets,” she warns.

“Don’t blow up any expensive equipment,” he warns back.

There’s another brief moment of awkward staring before she turns to May. May opens her arms and Jemma launches herself into them at once.

“I’m going to miss you so much,” May murmurs in her ear, just for her to hear.

“Me too, Mum,” Jemma chokes back.

“You can call me whenever,” May reminds her, caressing the back of her head. “Day, night, whenever. If you ever want to come home, even just for a visit, just say the word.”

“Okay,” Jemma manages, voice a little higher.

They hug for a long time. Until Jemma swallows the threatening tears and pulls away.

There’s another chorus of I-love-you’s and goodbyes. Skye ducks in for one last bone-crushing hug. Then the door shuts and Jemma sits down on her new bed and listens to the clatter of their footsteps fading in the stairwell.


	2. Chapter 2

May is much more worried than she lets the kids see. She wonders every other minute if she’s made the wrong decision, if Jemma is really ready for this step. Jemma has always had a hard time socially, even among kids her own age. She’s responsible when it comes to homework, but not great at remembering to pick her clothes up or stop for dinner. May has waking nightmares about her starving alone in her tiny, musty-smelling dorm room and has to physically stop herself from getting in the car and driving up to check on her.

The text messages appease her a little and Jemma never misses a phone call or a skype date. She babbles eagerly about her research, has endless praise to lavish on her professors, and even has good things to say about the organic choices at the cafeteria.

“And you needn’t worry about my socialization,” she tells May two weeks in.

“Why’s that?” May asks amusedly.

“I’ve taken the initiative to join the chemistry club as a means to interact with students closer to my own age. It’s perfect because they share my interests and it’s a casual-yet-academic setting where peer pressure to participate in unhealthy lifestyle choices is minimal.”

May bites her lip to keep the smile out of her voice. She’s missed that rapid-fire stream of logic. “Have you made any friends?”

“Of course! Katie and Darcy are both freshman and really smart and like Doctor Who, and I had lunch with the other research fellows the other day and they’re all lovely. And there’s a girl down the hall who invited me in for some refreshments, but, ah, given her blown pupils and inappropriate breaching of social norms, I offered a raincheck.”

“Good girl,” May tells her.

Jemma sends pictures of the campus squirrels and selfies of her in her Chemistry Club t-shirt and posters of interesting things happening on campus. She makes sure to send snapchats of herself reading at 11:00 P.M. on Friday nights to Skye and pictures of all the cool lab equipment she’s working with to Fitz. She mails Antoine a 3D printing of a plastic ninja turtle with his name on the bottom which he puts in pride of place at once on the shelf above the TV.

And while she’s prompt with their scheduled contact, she doesn’t call May in between, never once wakes her up in the middle of the night in tears. Not even that first week. She seems to be very happy and adjusting well, and May starts to think this might just have been the best thing for her. She’s finally found a sense of purpose and an environment where she can thrive academically, a peer group that speaks her language. May hates that she’s found it four-and-a-half hours away, but compared to the bored, stifled, quietly frustrated teenager that had been haunting May’s house for the past several months, this girl is welcome change.

By a month in, she talks May into only biweekly phone calls. The pictures are a little less frequent but no less cheerful. May asks about it one night and Jemma admits to being fairly swamped. She’s been made treasurer for the chemistry club and her experiments require frequent check-ins that are making her sleep schedule weird. Nothing unhealthy, she assures May, just eating into her picture-taking time.

But May misses her terribly. She misses sitting with her early in the mornings before the other kids wake up, drinking tea and trading pages of the newspaper in companionable silence. She misses her loopy handwriting filling up the to-do list on the fridge. She misses the sound of her and Fitz bantering from across the house and coming across her and Skye snuggled up in one twin bed watching Netflix, and seeing her and Antoine sparing in the backyard. There are just a thousand tiny things no one warned her about.

And Fitz has been particularly moody since she left. He got a technical degree over the summer and has been working in a garage as a mechanic. He seems to like it well enough, and there’s a kid only a couple years older named Mack that he’s gravitated towards, which secretly thrills May. It’s probably the first friend he’s made independently of Jemma… ever. And yet, he’s irritable, spends most of his time shut away in his room, is even less inclined to be dragged along on family outings than before.

In fact, with him always either at work or locked in his room, it almost feels like she’s lost him too.

May knew this was going to be hard on him. There was tension between Jemma and Fitz when she left, and she can tell there’s some resentment on both sides for the decision. She remembers the way the two had so vehemently sworn to run away if anyone tried to separate them seven years ago and is still surprised that Jemma chose to go and Fitz chose to stay. But, as Phil suggests when she updates him about this development, it might be a good thing that they’re learning to cope without each other. Despite Fitz’s moodiness, they’ve both made significant strides socially and maturity-wise during the separation.

“Silver linings, Mel,” he tells her.

It’s nearly Halloween before she convinces Jemma to come home for a visit. She offers to drive up to get her, but Jemma says she’s already bought a bus ticket. They all pack into the van to meet her at the station.

The girl that steps off the bus is not the girl May left in a dorm room two months ago. Jemma has cut her hair, lopping off the long, ribbony braid she often tied it back in so that it now just brushes her shoulders, loose and a little wavy. She’s traded in her geeky graphic tees and purple sneakers for a collared blouse and cardigan, dark dress pants, and sturdy leather boots that give her at least an extra inch in height. She’s even got a dust of makeup on.

“What the hell kinda threads you wearing?” Antoine asks, plucking delicately at the sweater as Skye bounces forward to hug her.

“I like it,” Skye says defensively, swatting Antoine and his disapproving expression away. “It makes you look like a real scientist,” she tells Jemma, letting her go to get a better look. “You look like you’re twenty at least.”

Jemma offers a smile that is not quite her full thousand-wat beam.

“That’s the idea, anyway. Stodgy old men don’t listen very well to girls with batman on their fronts. Hi May.”

The name hits May like a slap, although she’s sure that’s not Jemma’s intention. It winds her more from surprise than anything else, and she sees the moment the girl realizes what she’s said when her eyes widen, lips popping open a little. Everyone freezes at once, the other kids looking between the two of them with slightly stunned expressions.

Jemma’s fingers fly to her lips. “Oh, no, Mum, I’m sorry! That’s not what I meant to say. I don’t know where –”

May pushes the moment away and finds a smile to reassure her. “Forgotten my name already, have you?” she teases, raising her arms to offer Jemma a hug. Jemma gives a hesitant smile and steps into the embrace, but May doesn’t miss the way her eyes flash quickly over May’s face before she does so. It’s a habit May hasn’t seen much from her since before the adoption papers,. She files it away to frown over later.

Instead, she eases the suitcase out of Jemma’s hands and wraps an arm around her.

“We thought we’d stop at Spencer’s on the corner,” May tells her, squeezing her shoulders a little and feeling better when Jemma burrows into her side.

“That is, if you still like frozen yogurt,” Antoine intones behind them.

She twists a little to stick her tongue out at him, which seems to appease him.

She _has_ changed, though, in some ways. May watches her closely that night, playing a sort of spot-the-difference between the girl before her and the picture of Jemma she holds in her head. She is more reserved. Not necessarily in the evasive, closed-off way she had been when she’d first come to May, but in voice and body language, speaking in shorter, more precise sentences, holding her hands still in her lap.

She’s picked up an extra layer of formality, prefacing or tagging everything with a ‘please’ or an ‘excuse me’ or a ‘may I’. May knows this is her fallback for testing unfamiliar waters, and she hopes it will ease as Jemma readjusts to being home.

Although it is Skye’s night to do the dishes, Jemma insists on helping her. At first, May attributes this to wanting to spend some extra time with her sister, but afterwards when she offers to take Lancelot on his walk so May can rest her hip and gets up early to make waffles, May suspects ulterior motives. Either she is trying to prove her maturity, or she is trying to be a good house guest, and May hopes it’s the former.

Fitz isn’t exactly _avoiding_ her. He asks about the lab, about what it’s like being ten years younger than everyone she’s working with and if they listen to her or pick on her. But it feels all wrong, stiff and polite. Perfunctory, and his words dry up quickly. He skips out early on breakfast, giving the excuse that he’s needed in the garage, and is gone all day.

She goes to Skye’s volleyball tournament, and lets Antoine show off his new driver’s license by dragging her to the mall. She runs errands with May and visits Phil. She tries to get some of her work done. But she’s distracted all day. It’s sort of like she’s wearing refractive goggles and everything’s shifted twenty degrees from where it should be.

Fitz gets home just as they’re finishing dinner, and Jemma knocks hesitantly on his door.

“What?” he asks rather brusquely when she slides into the room.

“Erm – how was work?”

“Fine.”

She looks down at her hands. “You… you seem upset.”

“I’m not.”

“Fitz…” she sits down on his bed, peering up at him from between the rungs of the bunkbed ladder.

He sighs up at the ceiling and says, a bit less shortly, “I’m not upset, Jemma.”

“How come you spent all day at work?”

He shrugs out of his oil-stained flannel and tosses it toward the laundry basket. “I told you this morning. Mack needed my help with a rush job.”

“The one weekend I come home to visit? Fitz, my bus leaves at ten tomorrow morning, and I hardly got to see you at all.”

He doesn’t look at her, busy digging in his dresser for another shirt. “You’re the one who moved out.”

“See? I knew you were upset!”

Fitz shuts the dresser drawer harder than he needs to. The sharp bang fills the room. “Okay, oh-observant-one, yeah, maybe I am. Maybe I am a little ‘upset’ that you ran off the first chance you got.”

“Fitz, what was I supposed to do here?”

“I dunno – loads of things.”

“Like what?”

“Like - like get a job, or… or…do another Bachelors’ program, or –”

“Twiddle my thumbs and wait for you to grow up?”

It’s sharper than she really means it to be, but once it’s out there, she can’t bring herself to take it back.

“Or be my frickin – be my sister, yeah.”

She rolls her eyes at the slatted underside of the bunk. “You’re being childish.”

“I’m not the one playing dress-up.” He looks her outfit up and down derisively.

“ _I’m_ not the one wasting my talent in some pointless day job because I’m too afraid let go of Mummy’s hand!”

“We’re supposed to be a family, and you’re ruining that!”

“You’re holding me back!”

His voice goes deceptively calm. “So what? I’m dead weight to you?”

Jemma wrings her hands. “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

“No, I don’t blame you,” he says bitingly, turning away to shuffle papers around pointlessly on his desk. “No one would – would look twice at you if you… tied yourself to some guy who can’t even talk half the time, would they?”

“Fitz –”

“Just do me a – a favor while you’re out there… being brilliant. Just remember why – why I ended up like this in the first place.”

Jemma blinks at his rigid back a few times, mouth open. Then she turns and leaves the room.

…

“Where do you think you’re going?” May asks, sliding her reading glasses down to regard Jemma dubiously over the top of the newspaper.

The girl is standing in the living room doorway, bundled up in coat and scarf. Her little red suitcase rests beside. Skye and Antoine pause in their scathing commentary of some reality program to ogle her over the back of the couch. May lays aside the paper.

“I’m going back to campus,” Jemma says, quiet but decided.

“Yes,” May says. “But you’re a bit early. You’re bus doesn’t leave until tomorrow morning.”

Jemma takes a deep breath and shakes her head. “There’s a late bus tonight. I can change my ticket.”

“And why this sudden change of plans?” May inquires, raising her eyebrows. “At…” she checks her watch. “Eight o’clock at night?”

“There’s, um, just some work I really need to get done.”

God help the girl, but she’s always been a terrible liar. Her voice has suddenly gone from steady to high-pitched and shaky and her eyes won’t leave the ceiling.

They both know she’s lying, and May crosses her arms and waits, but Jemma doesn’t come clean.

“Jemma, I’m not putting you on a bus alone at eight o’clock at night. You won’t get back until after midnight and part of our agreement is that you don’t walk around town at night, alone or otherwise.”

“I’ll get a cab from the station to my dorm. I have pepper-spray, and you know I can defend myself.”

“Okay, that still doesn’t mean you should be putting yourself in potentially risky situations. And how much work can you possibly get done on a bus? Doesn’t it make more sense to stay here and–”

“I’ve decided I need to leave tonight,” Jemma interrupts and May suddenly realizes there is no room for negotiation in her voice. “I called an Uber. It’s in the driveway. I just wanted to let you know I was going.”

May feels winded all over again, like she’s in one of those dreams where she’s running but knows she’ll never reach where she needs to be in time.

“That really isn’t how things work around here, kiddo,” she says as evenly as she can. “I know you’ve gotten used to a lot of freedom, but that doesn’t mean you can leave in the middle of the night without talking to me.”

“I’m talking to you now,” Jemma points out.

“I mean before you call an Uber.”

“I’m sorry I sprang it on you, but it’s not really up for discussion.”

“You’re not really in the position to make that call.” May’s expression is neutral, but her lips are pressed into a firm line.

Skye and Antoine have frozen, only their eyes darting uncertainly between May and Jemma at opposite ends of the room.

Jemma finally loses some of her calm collectedness. She rolls her eyes and turns half-around in exasperation.

“I keep my own schedule for months, but I step into your house and suddenly I’m not allowed to decide when I can leave?”

_Your_ house. May doesn’t miss this.

“Yes, actually,” she says, crossing her arms. “Like it or not, I’m still the one responsible for you, and I still call the shots.”

It’s like she’s channeling her mother’s spirit. Her brain is screaming that this is the very last thing any teenager wants to hear, but her mouth says it anyway. Jemma’s expression hardens instantly.

“Except you’re not, really, are you? Responsible for me. Not anymore.” She says it very quietly, but this time the searing edge in the words is intentional. “I do my own shopping and cleaning and cooking. I’m supporting myself with my own effort and intellect. It’s _my_ fellowship and _my_ research assistant job that are paying for my food, my housing, my clothes. I put myself to bed, I get myself up, I balance my diet, I get myself wherever I need to go – I got myself here. And I’m getting myself out.”

May knows she needs words, needs a response to this, the _right_ response, but it’s just not coming. She’s just opened her mouth to say – anything – when something even worse happens. The heat and petulance and stubbornness in Jemma’s face fade to something almost blank.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done for me,” she says, and although the words come barely above a whisper, they seem to billow into every corner of the room. “And for Fitz. Especially for Fitz. I really do appreciate it, and I’ll never be able to repay you. You’ve been very kind.”

She’s at the door before May can cross the room, and although May bolts after her into the cold night, she’s met only with the slamming of a car door and the rev of an engine as the waiting Uber in the driveway pulls out.

“The fuck just happened?” Antoine’s voice echoes her thoughts, and she turns to see him and Skye hanging out of the front door.

“Did she just quit the family?” Skye asks, lips trembling. “She can’t do that, can she? She can’t just _leave_.”

“No,” May says and the word’s unmovable. She brushing past them, stuffs her feet into the first pair of shoes she can find, swings her coat around her shoulder, and in the few steps it takes to grab her keys off the coffee table, she’s running. “Stay with your brother and sister,” she flings at Antoine over her shoulder as she bursts into the garage.

She almost backs out through the garage door, but stops herself just in time. It seems to take an age for the thing to open. She’s been counting the seconds in her head. She can’t be more than two minutes behind them, and she plans on speeding.

There’s a seat beside the window of the bus station, out of eye line from the front door, but with a good view of both the ticket booth and the pick-up zone, just in case Jemma decides to try to sneak around back. May crosses her legs and waits.

And waits.

Jemma’s bus shows up without any sign of her in the station. May watches closely, but doesn’t see her in the small crowd checking bags. She ducks inside to scan the occupied seats, but Jemma’s not on board.

Frustrated, antsy, trying not to panic, she jabs out a quick text message.

_Where are you?_

Of all of the kids, Jemma is the last one she anticipated looking for at a bus station in the middle of the night. Then again, she thinks, she should have seen this coming. Jemma’s always been the fighter. May just never expected to be the thing she was fighting

She checks her phone every five seconds but there’s no reply from Jemma. Antoine, Skye, and Fitz have all bombarded her inbox with pleas for information and there’s a missed call and voicemail from Phil, too. She ignores them.

The bus pulls out.

8:16

_Jemma you need to tell me where you are_

8:17

_i’m not mad_

She calls. The phone rings four times before dumping her in Jemma’s voicemail.

8:19

_if you don’t tell me where you are in the next 5 minutes i’m calling the police and putting out an Amber alert_

It’s exactly five minutes later when the phone pressed between her palms like a prayer stone buzzes.

_I’m catching the bus in Dear Field. I’m fine. I’ll send a check for the phone bill and switch to my own plan next month._

The laugh that bursts out of May’s mouth is slightly hysterical and the people near her in the station cast her apprehensive looks. Of course. Jemma predicted her moves like a pro. Dear Field is only twenty minutes up the highway, but by now, Jemma’s bus has nearly a ten minute head start. There is a slim chance of her catching it even if she goes twenty over the whole way. It might be better like this though, May reflects as she swings herself into her car. The four-and-a-half hour drive will give them both a chance to calm down and think about what to say.

She calls Phil to catch him up on the situation and he agrees at once to stay with the rest of the kids for the night. Then she calls Antoine to let them know what’s going on. As she hoped, he takes it all in stride, going so far as to reassure _her_ that Jemma would ‘chill out’. She asks to talk to Fitz and Antoine passes the phone over. He sounds kind of shaky, but at least he’s talking.

“We had a… a fight,” he explains, sounding close to tears. “I mean worse than usual, Skye. Shut up.”

“Don’t tell your sister to shut up,” she chides reflexively. “Look, honey, I don’t think this is about you,” she tries to assure him.

“I said something really bad, Mum.”

May’s heart clenches. “What did you say?”

There’s silence on the other end. She hears Skye’s voice in the background. “She said bad stuff, too,” Fitz says, voice raised and defensive, clearly aimed at his siblings.

“Listen to me,” May says a little louder. “It’s going to be fine. I’m going to bring her home tomorrow and you guys can work out whatever’s been going on with you, okay? This is not a big deal.”

“Antoine says she thanked you for ‘helping’ us.”

Yeah, okay, maybe this was messier than your typical teenage break for freedom.

“I’m going to talk to her and straighten things out.”

“Mum… promise?”

“I promise, baby. We’ll see you soon.”

The highway is long, dark, and lonely, but May used to work this road and she knows how to avoid all the speed traps. She pours on the gas and catches up with the bus an hour into the drive. She doesn’t dare take her eyes off the road long enough to search for Jemma’s face in the windows, but she keeps pace with the bus the whole way there. Having it in her sights considerably eases the hard knot of anxiety her stomach has twisted itself into.

But even after four-and-a-half hours, she hasn’t come up with much to say. In every tough conversation before this (and there’ve been many) the kids have always trusted her implicitly to be the adult. This is a gray area May is entirely unsure how to navigate. But her kid is lost somewhere in it, so she’s plunging in headfirst.

As they near the bus station, May shoots ahead so she can be waiting at the drop-off the moment the doors open. She leans against a pillar five feet from the curb, arms crossed and impossible to overlook, and Jemma sees her the moment she hits the pavement. Her eyes widen a little and May can’t help but hone in on the smeared makeup and evidence of tears.

But when she collects her suitcase and finally turns to May, there is fight in every angle of her small frame.

“I’m not getting in the car with you,” Jemma says.

May wants to pull her hair out, but she takes a deep breath instead. “Okay, but we’re going to talk.”

“What is there to talk about?” Jemma asks coolly. “I’ll continue to call if you like, and I can visit once in a while –”

“Jemma, you can’t just declare your independence. That’s not how this works.”

“I can file for the legal documentation if that –”

May cannot believe what she’s hearing. “This is out of hand. Honey, you are not _un_ adopting yourself,” she says firmly. And then more softly, “Why would you even think that? Where is this coming from?”

A flood of unidentifiable things fills Jemma’s face and she looks down. Hesitantly, so as not to overstep any boundaries, May puts a hand on her shoulder, slides it up to her cheek to tip Jemma’s face up to her own.

“Talk to me, baby,” she says quietly and it’s an order, a plea and a lifeline all in one.

Jemma opens and closes her mouth several times until finally, so quietly May barely hears it, she says, “I don’t fit.”

_Of course you do_ May wants to say, wants to wrap her in her arms so she can feel it. _You fit right here. You’ve always fit right here_. But that doesn’t seem like it’s going to be enough this time.

So instead, she asks, “What do you mean?”

Jemma wrings her hands and pulls on her fingers, searching for words.

 “Legally, biologically, I’m an adolescent,” she says at last. “But mentally and functionally, I’m an adult. I can’t stay at home, but no one here’s interested in babysitting, so…” She hitches her shoulders, pulling a fractured smile.

And at last May sees the real danger. She’d been afraid of the eighteen-year-olds drinking and doing drugs, but she should have been afraid of the twenty-eight-year-olds paying rent and having dinner parties. For this girl who learned first how to take care of herself and second how to let someone else do it, the grown-ups were the pressuring peers.

“Jemma, please listen to me,” she says, putting a steadying hand on both the girl’s shoulders. “Your mind is an incredible thing. You can write a dissertation and run experiments better than most adults ever could, but that is not what makes you ready to be on your own. You can buy your own groceries and cook your own meals and do your own laundry, but that doesn’t mean you’ve _outgrown_ me.

“Honey, you can’t outgrow me.” Tenderly, she brushes stray hairs out of Jemma’s face. “When I asked to adopt you, I didn’t mean just until you could look after yourselves. That was a forever deal, kiddo. I’m your mother. You’re my daughter. And that relationship isn’t always going to look the same but it _is_ always going to be there, no matter how old you get. It’s not charity. It’s not me being ‘kind’. And you never have to thank me for it, okay?”

She’s taken it for granted that Jemma knows this, that after seven years, the kids trust that promise with all their weight. But she will reaffirm it in front of as many freezing bus stations as it takes, as many times and in as many different situations as Jemma needs to hear it.

Jemma hasn’t said anything yet, though. She’s still frozen before her.

“I need to know _you_ know that,” May says, ducking her head a little so their eyes are on a level. “You do know you’re always going to be a part of our family, right?”

Finally, slowly, she nods. Her expression crumples, and she folds herself into May’s arms.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she says through stuttering breaths. “I don’t know what I was thinking earlier – I don’t know – why I said – why I thought – I _did_ know you meant forever. I do. It’s just –”

“This is a confusing situation,” May supplies when she comes up short, running her hands up and down Jemma’s back. “For both of us. You have the freedom and responsibility of a college student, but you _aren’t_ an adult yet, and we haven’t talked about what that means. I should have thought about it before you left, and that’s my fault. This is new to me, too. I’m so sorry, baby.”

“It’s been – re-really hard,” Jemma chokes into May’s shoulder, and at last the full story comes out. How much moving had felt like being back in the system. How many nightmares she’d had in the first few weeks. How awful the dorms are with people always shouting and running up and down the hallways and being drunk all over the place. How hard it is to prove to her colleagues she knows what she’s talking about. How even the freshmen in her chemistry club aren’t interested in hanging out with a fifteen-year-old. How pressured she felt to change in order to find a place here.

How _much_ she’s missed May and her brothers and sister and Phil and Steve and Nat and Bobbi even Clint. And _Lancelot_.

“Why didn’t you _tell_ me any of this?” May asks, rocking her gently as they sit against the bus station’s icy, brick walls, Jemma curled half in her lap.

“I was afraid you’d make me come home,” Jemma mumbles. “And – I didn’t want to be a baby and cry to my mum.”

“Part of being mature means asking for help when you need it. And not lying to your mother.”

“I wasn’t _lying_ , per se. More like stretching the truth. And… forgetting some details.”

May shakes her head. “Well, from here on out, no more stretching or forgetting. If you’re living away from home like this, I need to know what’s really happening in your life. Especially if you’re struggling.”

“Does that mean you’re going to let me stay?” Jemma asks hopefully.

May smooths her hair down. “Let’s discuss that when we’re both less exhausted, okay?”

“But we’ll discuss it?”

“We will. But I still have veto power until you’re eighteen. Got it?”

Jemma hums a resigned assent that isn’t as reluctant as it could be.

It’s well past two in the morning before May finally bundles her into the car. May’s face and fingers are completely numb from cold and her back aches from sitting on the cement for so long, but she doesn’t care at all.

…

Fitz doesn’t hug people very often, but he’s always made an exception for Jemma. Phil took Skye and Antoine on a grocery run so he’s the only person home to greet them. He doesn’t say anything, just climbs over the back of the couch and catches her up in his arms. It only takes her a second to melt into it.

“I didn’t mean what I said,” Fitz tells her, letting her go and stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“I know,” she says a little tearfully. “Me neither.”

“It wasn’t your fault. I – I never ever thought that.”

“I know. And you’re not holding me back. You’ve never held me back.”

“I’m the only reason you’re as good as you are.” He smirks a little, and she rolls her eyes.

May has gone into the kitchen and they can hear her making tea. Jemma drops tiredly onto the couch and Fitz perches on the armrest next to her.

“Did you leave ‘cause of what I said?” he asks, flicking her arm to get her to open her eyes.

“Yes, but not just because of that,” she murmurs. “It just sort of hurt. Being here and knowing I couldn’t stay. I think I should’ve waited for you.”

Her eyes flick toward his face and then away.

“You were bored here,” he says and it sounds like it’s a hard thing for him to admit. “You – you weren’t happy. I should’ve gone with you. I could’ve.”

But she’s shaking her head. “You would’ve hated it, Fitz. _You_ wouldn’t have been happy.”

They look at each other.

“Are you in trouble for running away?” he asks.

Jemma shrugs. “Mum wants me to take a vacation term. She says it’s a ‘toxic environment’.”

“Are you mad?”

Jemma thinks a minute before she answers. “No. Don’t tell her, but she’s probably right. She says I can apply to the state U for the spring semester. It’s half as far so I can come home every weekend, and Bobbi’s there so I won’t be totally alone. Not exactly a top program, but this is hardly going to be my only PhD.”

“And I’ll be there next fall,” Fitz adds, and her eyes pop back open.

“Really?”

“Well….” He nods. “I think so. I like the garage, but it’s going to get dull pretty soon, I reckon. I want to be a proper engineer.”

She beams at him and they start talking about potential collaborative projects they could work on with access to cutting-edge lab equipment.

While Fitz is looking for some of his most recent ideas, Jemma slips into the kitchen and hops up onto to where May is making sandwiches for lunch. She passes Jemma the jar of mayonnaise and Jemma begins spreading it on slices of toast.

“I know I don’t have to be,” she says after the second slice. “But I’m still grateful we’re here.”

They can hear Fitz banging back down the hallway, so she darts in to peck May quickly on the cheek and dashes off to join him. May listens to the sound of their voices mingling and feels the tension uncoil from her muscles for the first time in months.


End file.
